Apex Legends has innovated and rethought several aspects of the battle royale genre, but one thing they decided to keep pretty much as-is, and that’s what Respawn have called the Ring. This Ring operates in much the same manner as the Storm in Fortnite and the Playzone in PUBG, forcing players closer together over the course of each match, and damaging those caught outside the border.

But there’s a lot going on under the surface of this system, and we haven’t found anywhere that explains all the stats and breaks down the different rounds of a match properly. So we thought we’d do it ourselves!

Our Apex Legends Ring guide will walk you through the rounds of a match, and the behaviour and stats you can expect from the Ring at each moment. We also answer questions such as: how long can an Apex Legends match go on for? And how small can the Ring get? Find out all this and more below.

Apex Legends Ring guide and stats

There’s a surprising amount to learn about the movement and behaviour of the Ring over the course of an Apex Legends match. Fortunately you’re in exactly the right place to find out everything you need to know. Click on any of the links in the contents section below to be brought instantly to the knowledge you so desire.

Apex Legends Rounds per match

A match in Apex Legends is broken into smaller sections called Rounds. You can easily keep track of which round of a match you are currently in, either by listening out for the announcer who tells you when a new round begins, or by checking just below your minimap in the top-left of your screen for the circled number, which always indicates your current round.

There are a maximum of 8 rounds in total in a match, and each of these Rounds can be broken up further into a Wait period, and a Closing period. During a Wait period, you are able to see on the map where the Ring will shrink to next, giving you a chance to make your way there before it can reach you. Once the Wait period is over, the Closing period begins, during which the Ring will contract until it reaches its projected destination.

If you are caught outside the Ring at any time, you will begin to suffer Health damage every 1.5 seconds. This damage ignores whatever Shields you may have, and deals only Health damage to you, which makes it very important that you either stay within the Ring or bring enough Apex Legends healing items to keep yourself alive during your forays through this damage zone.

The above is a composite I created of the size and positions of every Ring in an Apex Legends match. Click the image to view it at highest resolution.

Apex Legends Ring stats and stages (Circle sizes, damage stats)

At the beginning of a match, there is a 10-second countdown before players may begin to drop from the Transport Ship; after which there is a period of around 75 seconds before the first round begins and the presence of the Ring makes itself known upon King’s Canyon.

In the below table we’ve catalogued everything we know about the Ring at each Round of a match, broken as previously mentioned into Wait periods and Closing periods. Bear in mind that there is a period of about 4 seconds between each Wait period and Closing period which we’ve ignored for the purposes of the below stats.

Note: all the Circle sizes relate to the diameter of the Ring at different intervals, and has been worked out based on our calculations of the length and width of the King’s Canyon map, which we’ve worked out to be around 1,925m x 1,925m.

Round

Wait Period

Closing Period

Damage Per Tick

Ring Diameter

% Area of Previous Ring

1

4m

2m 30s

1

1115m

26% (of map area)

2

3m 30s

1m 3s

2

680m

37%

3

3m

35s

5

410m

36%

4

2m 15s

28s

5

105m

6.6%

5

2m

18s

10

80m

58%

6

1m 30s

5s

10

40m

25%

7

2m

6.5s

10

4m

1%

8

20s

1s

10

0m

0%

As you can see there are some surprising jumps in behaviour at certain points. For example, the difference in Ring size between Rounds 3 and 4 is much larger than any other transition, which means at this point there is a significant increase in the speed of the Ring’s movement. Another oddity is that the Wait period actually increases between Round 6 and Round 7, giving players more time to get into the final and tiniest of circles for when Round 8 arrives.

It’s also worth noting that the Ring caps out at its maximum 10 damage per tick (6.67 DPS) at the beginning of Round 5 – though of course, it’s fairly rare that a match will see a fifth Round, let alone an eighth. Most matches that we’ve played and seen tend to go on until Round 4 or 3 (or even 2), at which point one team generally manages to hunt down the others and win the match.

Apex Legends game length – how long can a match last?

Taking all this into account, we can actually work out with a fair amount of accuracy how long an Apex Legends match can go on for. Adding up all the Wait and Closing period durations gives us a figure of 23m 41.5s; add to this the 10 seconds before dropping from the Transport Ship at the beginning of the match, and then the 75 seconds before Round 1 begins… AND the 4-second delays between each Wait and Closing period…

All in all, the time between the very beginning of a match and the point where the Ring shrinks to nothing is 26 minutes and 6.5 seconds.

Of course, players can continue to heal themselves after this point… but I’ll leave someone else to figure out exactly how long they could survive. I presume it involves some combination of Lifeline’s passive and tactical abilities, an enemy that for some reason has no interest in killing you, and a Gold Backpack filled with Med Kits or Syringes. You could probably extend your life by a good 10 minutes if you really wanted to; but that’s not really playing the game anymore, is it?

Anyway, that’s everything we’ve got on the Ring and how it behaves and deals damage over the course of an Apex Legends match. Hopefully you’ve emerged from this stat-heavy guide a little more enlightened as to the strange quirks and undeniable power of the ever-shrinking Ring.